


Hours Upon Hours

by texastoasted



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, Temporary Character Death, really why is the respawn system so buggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:43:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/texastoasted/pseuds/texastoasted
Summary: Sniper vaguely recalled someone’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him, pulling him away from the cold corpse. God, the things he had wanted to say-he should have said them. It should have been him.Where a mercenary learns to not take the people you love for granted, and two hours feels like an eternity.





	Hours Upon Hours

It was a day of shit by the gallon hitting the fan, really. 

“Hey, Stretch,” Engineer had said, his voice loud and dead over the roar over the wind. “Come on inside for a minute. We need to have a team meeting of sorts.”

Sniper missed his friend’s old tone of voice. It was hard to feel joy when it felt like their team was a tiny, weak dam against a roaring river of robots. There were low sounds of conversation from the kitchen. Sniper stamped the last of the snow from his boots and sidled towards an empty space at the kitchen table that sat exactly nine. Sniper would normally have tuned out the repetitive whack of Scout’s ball against the wall and the sound of striking matches, but now he dug his heels in like crushing out a cigarette. Any semblance of things being normal again was like a breath of fresh air. He locked eyes with Spy when the Frenchman materialized in the doorway. 

“All right, then,” Medic began promptly, one fist clenched against his chest. “Everyone is here. Let us begin. Herr Engineer?”

“Thanks, Doc. I’ll cut to the chase, boys. Our situation already ain’t pretty. We’re fighting off more waves of bots than we can handle. I’m sorry to say I gotta add some more bad news on top of the expected invasion Friday- respawn ain’t workin’ right.”

“How’s that, lads?” Demo asked, his grip tightening on the neck of his bottle of scrumpy, threatening to shatter it.

“The DNA copies ain’t loading right. For hours or more. Y’all recall when Pyro went outside to play Wednesday morning and didn’t come back until the crack of dawn? Tripped on a rock under the snow and...the point is, went out looking for ‘em, and body was still there. Been hours.” Engineer gestured hopelessly.

“Herr Engineer brought zhe body back to me,” Medic interjected calmly, “As we thought ze Pyro might still be alive. We discovered that the respawn system was simply not vorking.”

“Twelve hours, that was the longest. Y’all are coming back with longer and longer gaps in between death and respawn. We fear it might get to a point of not workin’ at all. I’m not sure what the hell is going on, but we’re doing our best to fix it as soon as possible.”

“In the meantime, ve must be extremely careful. Deaths in battle will cripple zhis team more than before.”

They had filed out, looks of gloom painted on their faces. Spy’s eyes almost met his. It was infuriating, really-before the end of the Gravel Wars, they had been getting somewhere, and it felt like it had been taken from them. They had progressed from rough, quick sex in sniper’s nests and vacant basements and even begun to grace each other’s rooms and beds. It felt like progress on them was stalled like stagnant heat on a summer afternoon. There had been quickies, now and then, but Sniper missed sleeping over in Spy’s bed more than he cared to admit. There was a lot more going on than he cared to admit. For Christ’s sake, he was dealing with feelings of love.

“Now’s not the time to nod off, ya weasel!” came Demo’s indignant shout from the battlefield. 

Sniper blinked, hard. Not a good moment to reminiscence.

“Sorry, mate!” he called from his position in one of the saloon’s windows, and raised the scope back up to his eye. The scene was rather grim, with bodies of robots strewn up both sides of the street like plowed snow, but surprisingly, they were holding out okay. Medic was working overtime to keep them all in top shape, and Engineer had become a pit paranoid with his spy checks to keep the dispenser up. So far, incredibly, no one had died. He couldn’t help himself, he spent a bit too long looking for Spy on the battlefield, searching for the haze of his invisibility watch or the crackle of his sapper. Nothing. The Frenchman’s presence was gone from the battlefield like an extinguished cigarette.

“Hey, you seen the spook?” he asked Heavy later, the two of them refueling at a dispenser.

The Russian shook his head, his features clouding. “No. Not for long time.”

“I saw him.” Scout piped up, turning his head to spit a wad of blood and saliva into a bush. “Yeah, he was tailing one of those fuckers into the base.”

Relief flooded Sniper’s lungs. 

“But that was almost an hour ago. Dunno about now.” Scout shrugged and sank to his haunches near the dispenser.

“I’ll...be right back. Gonna go check on ‘im.”

Normally, Sniper was sure, he’d be gifted with some sexual insinuation from Scout about such a comment, but the Bostonian only nodded. They’d all been watching each others backs more than usual lately.

He got his answer, all right.

There were dark maroon holes peppering Spy’s body like flies on a corpse, still and reflective blood leaking out from under him. The Frenchman was paler than Sniper had ever seen him, glassy eyes gazing up at the ceiling, fingers splayed towards the way he had just come, like he was calling for help.

“Oh, God no. Christ, no.”

How long had he been laying here, in agony as the bullets lodged in his body made him bleed like a stuck pig? How cold had he gotten on this floor, not even that far away from the rest of the sticking-together team, probably listening to the faint shouts of battle? God. There was a lump in Sniper’s throat that was making it incredibly hard to breathe. God, there was a chance he wouldn’t see Spy alive again. Sniper dropped to his knees and roughly pulled Spy up onto his lap, two fingers searching desperately for a pulse on his neck. Was it there, weak and thready? Damn it, he couldn’t tell past the throbbing of his own hand. All the fucking time he had spent wondering about it, when he should have gone and checked. The rest of the battle and the next few days passed in a haze. Sniper vaguely recalled someone’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him, pulling him away from the cold corpse. He vaguely recalled punching that person in the nose. The Australian spent time listlessly drifting from the hallway outside Spy’s room to the respawn room, gazing at the cold tile and hating the roiling anguish in his gut. God, the things he had wanted to say-he should have said them. It should have been him. Spy would be dealing with this better. Engineer had given up on trying to get him to stop wandering around like a ghost-he’ll reboot with the respawn system, Sniper heard him say to Medic offhandedly.

It felt like he had waited decades when a sleepy beep came from a monitor and the system came to life. The air crackled, the whole room humming like a beehive, and all at once, Spy was there again. Sniper could barely breathe.

“Bonjour,” Spy said quizzically, one eyebrow cocked. 

He was practically hopping from toe to toe, waiting for Medic and Engineer to finish their thorough examination and questioning, respectively. There seemed to be a bit of memory loss for the day of Spy’s death, but Medic said it should clear up and he seemed fine, and Sniper was dragging him out by the wrist into the Frenchman’s own room. “Need to talk to you,” he said lowly. 

He held Spy’s face in his hands and kissed it with all the strength he had left in his body.

“Good to see you too, mon amour-” 

“You don’t understand,” Sniper said hoarsely, inhaling the blessed smell of cigarette smoke, “Thought I’d lost you for good.”

“So they were telling me.” The Frenchman murmured, trailing kisses up the side of Sniper’s neck. “‘ow suddenly we can realize life is fleeting, hm?”

“Exactly. Makes you want to do impulsive things.” Sniper dropped to his knees, shrugging off his vest onto the floor behind him and tossing his hat onto Spy’s smoking armchair like a boomerang. It took him even less time to take his lover’s pants off than it did to reload his rifle, exposing the clean, comforting navy blue lines of hidden briefs. The fabric was already being strained tightly, like a fitted sheet over a mattress.

“Oui? Like what?” Spy asked, gazing down at him, a hint of a smile tugging at his cheek.

“Tell people you love ‘em,” Sniper murmured, and tugged down the waistline of Spy’s underwear, the Frenchman’s cock springing forward into his waiting mouth.

“Mon dieu,” Spy gasped, threading his fingers through Sniper’s hair and raising his chin to the ceiling. He could barely resist bucking into his lover’s mouth. He had no idea what the newly fixed respawn system had done to him, but every nerve seemed to be alight, his senses dangerously close to tipping over the edge. Just the sensation of the Australian’s tongue on his head made him feel close to passing out. “Bushman, you’ve-”

“Don’t worry,” Sniper told him, letting Spy slide out of his mouth into the suddenly agonizing cold air, “I’ve more planned for you.”

It was only when Spy’s collarbones were pressed up against the back of his armchair, one hand gripping his lover’s hip and the other over Sniper’s hand on his cock that he processed what the man had said. He shook himself out of the blissful daze he was sinking into with every thrust from behind. “Mon amour, I-”

Before he could get the words out, Sniper let out a animalistic groan from behind clenched teeth and doubled his pace, thumbing the tip of Spy’s cock in his calloused hand. The Frenchman swore into the fabric of the armchair. In a moment he felt Sniper spilling into him, hot fluid leaking out around the Australian’s cock. He moaned something in French as he felt his body jerk, coming around Sniper’s hand and his own, his lover continuing to squeeze everything there was out of him.

“What was that?” Sniper murmured, planting a few weary kisses on the back of Spy’s neck. He reached up with his clean hand to adjust the Frenchman’s mask where some salt-and-pepper hair was poking out like feathers out of an overstuffed pillow.

“Je t’aime. I love you.” Spy let his cheek rest on the top of the chair, thoroughly spent. He let his eyelids fall shut. “I should almost die permanently more often.”

“Or we could just do this more often,” Sniper suggested, a snort escaping in the middle of his sentence, “without the you dying part.”

“D’accord.” Spy agreed, and the two of them laughed into each other, a laugh of relief and of home.


End file.
